NASA looking for Jadoo on Mars

[US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korneinko have blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft to spend a full year at the International Space Station. They are attempting to create a record of the amount of time spent at this guinea lab to see what happens to these two lab rats after 12 months in zero-gravity, drinking recycled piss, hurling around the planet (wheee) and no sex… at all; a vacation that Valery Polyakov has scoffed at after spending 437 days in an older version of above mentioned space lab, in 1994.

Image Courtesy: Google Images/NASA.

Disgruntled astronauts who were passed over for this glorious mission, including Tom Hanks, who apparently didn’t learn anything from his Apollo 13 near-death experience, have alleged that this mission is a front to actually send humans to Mars from where a signal has been received in a single monosyllable repetition sequence that goes Om- Om- Om- Om- Om in different pitches. Tom Hanks is so getting fired for this.

Rakesh Roshan, Indian film director and the father of a Greek Demigod, seems to have strong views on the subject. Bruce Willis, who became head of NASA after blowing up that asteroid aiming for Earth and having a habit of generally Dying Hard for over a decade is also stoked.

Russia and the United States, the two nations whose astronauts are on this mission have vehemently denied these accusations of a world-wide conspiracy, calling them wild and misleading theories to create panic and bring down the credibility of their governments. They further denied building space weapons, continuing research on Skynet, the existence of Area 51 and that Will Smith had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour for bringing down a space plane in Independence Day.

Note: ISRO made the bolts for the garbage chute on this vehicle.]

[This is my article for the Faking News website. You can and probably should read it here: NASA’s ‘Year in Space’ is a conspiracy to find Jadoo]

Note: This post has been written for Faking news. Did you notice the ‘Faking’ before the word news? That’s because this is a parody of mainstream news and is supposed to be taken in jest and humour.

Beyond Boundaries

Today I was watching a lesser known film titled ‘Einstein and Eddington’. For those who have not yet had the chance of watching it, the film is the tale of two scientists, one German and the other English, set in the backdrop of the First World War and meaning to show how science, which was at that time, the right hand of the military, transcended national identities to give a clearer picture of the universe as we know it today.

This blog post is not a review of the film but rather an amalgamation of thoughts that it evoked at its outset.

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

The correspondence of scientists from two countries at war on a planet that is so miniscule that it fades into insignificance at the magnitude of the theory that one of them developed and the other attempted to prove says something about human endeavour and its burning passion for knowledge even in the most brutal of times.

The 1900s were probably not the best of times for free scientific research because of the pressures of continuous conflicts and the race to be at the forefront of technological innovation that was spurred on by warring factions in Europe.

Today, the times are different and collaboration has reached a level where it’s difficult to pinpoint which country developed what because scientific approach today is one where the entire race is benefited from work towards a common goal by shared research and development.

It is almost magical (and that’s an ironical adjective to use) to see how correspondence between two great and open minds helped to establish the new laws of gravity and its behaviour in the universe. What’s more is that an English scientist helped a German scientist prove Sir Isaac Newton wrong.

This uncommon, possibly dangerous and mildly traitorous collaboration at that time brought about future discoveries that would have otherwise been delayed by decades of war. And all it took was one moment of courage and determination by one scientist to pose a question to another who was looking to answer that very question but didn’t know how to.

This goes a long way in showing how much good humanity is capable of; it speaks of a glimmer of hope amidst the devastation of war and the continuous search for the truth in the bleakest times of barbarity that can be conjured up. The same mind that can unravel whole civilizations can also unravel the threads of the universe.

Humanity has two faces and even though it might feel like the good side is faded beyond recognition, it shines more brilliantly at the worst of times to give hope and satisfaction to those with faith.

The Love of Real Books

There is a thing about books which makes me want to go back to those days when we didn't have a computer, only Doordarshan on TV and lots of books. When I was in school which wasn't exactly a long time ago in actual years but really ancient history in technology years, the only thing we used to do with a computer was either type in MS-Dos commands or play that car game that was a glitch in the Windows ’98. The rest of the time… we used to read – Real Books!

You know those things with either soft or hard bound covers, stitched down the middle at the back or stuck together with gum that hold real pages made out of paper and imprinted with ink? Those are called Books.

There develops a kind of emotional attachment to books that only a long-time reader can understand. Over time, it becomes difficult to spend free time without a book in the hand. It becomes impossible to take a coffee or loo break without continuing and finishing the chapter you began during breakfast. If the book is very good, it often becomes hard to even switch off the bedside lamp even though you know that you’re going to wake up so late that someone or the other is going to shout at you for it. You put on the lights in the middle of the night because you can’t sleep without reading those last two hundred pages which are seducing you from the table top. You cannot imagine a Sunday without a good book and coffee. Your vacation luggage consists of more books than the number of clothes you've packed. You take breaks from studying during exams by reading your novel and then forget all about the exams. You ultimately read so many books that there comes a time when you can hardly distinguish between what’s real and what’s not; it becomes Inception!

Some of us have this special place in our heart for real books. Now what with technology and all, it’s just easier to order e-books and they’re cheaper too it seems, but some of us just can’t manage to get the feel of a book while reading it on a steel-covered machine. We are that breed of readers who prefer pure-blooded books and I’m not against the Mudbloods or anything but reading in the harsh light without the warm glow of the lamp, holding hard steel instead of soft paper and feeling the scratches on metal instead of dog-eared pages don’t exactly appeal to us.

Well, I’m one of those who are orthodox in the ways of reading and I’m sure there are many others who prefer it this way.

Here are a few lines that just flew out at the end of the post:

The Way I like It

Ruffling pages, smelling sweet

From the age old dust of yore.

The musty scent of history

And weight of decades past;

Arouse In me a gentle lad

Who loves to lose it all,

To a few pages of print

Than to a machine of iron wrought.

How do you like your books; Real or Virtual? Do share your thoughts.

The Replacement of the Journalist

Journalists are those who have taken up the challenge to inform the general public of what is happening around them. They swear to do so with all the morality and with every ounce of ethical matter they posses.

Now, I know that it doesn't always turn out this way and some journalists tend to go off the path they started out on, however, this is the code of the journalist and it has remained as such; preserved within those few who have upheld the torch of truth in the bog of deceit that surrounds us.

I, like any other aspiring journalist, would like to believe that there is still something to be salvaged from the apparent wreck of journalism. Although my realistic side does tend to give me a slap now and again about my childish folly, I want to believe that every journalist is human first and a pawn of society second.

This is because the journalist has something that is called a conscience. An inherent feeling of what is right and wrong. And even though they cannot afford the luxury of subjectivity in their line of work, they still have the sacred duty of protecting the society in their role as gatekeepers of any and all information that is received by the mass.

Image Courtesy: Google Images/The Guardian.

I recently read somewhere that a few media houses had begun using robots, yes, robots to automatically update news from sources. These ‘technological marvels’ auto-update news on the basis of pre-set priorities from a given clutter of information.

How, I ask?

How can a machine tell what information is to be disseminated and what is not?

How can a machine distinguish between right and wrong?

How can a machine judge situation based on real-time scenarios the way humans do?

I believe they cannot. Period.

They say that these robots are just supplementary machines to help the human journalist spread information faster. At present they only update harmless news which requires no analysis. Well, what next? The next thing you know, computers will be compiling full page reports on happenings. Will the human element be taken out of the equation entirely? I probably think so.

Maybe I’m being paranoid and maybe I’m just worried that I may not get a job when I finish communication school, but is this justified? Computers dishing out analysis that require the human mind and conscience to do the job?

I think not.

The Rise of the Machines

[People say that the answer to whether or not we are alone in the universe is the scariest, I beg to differ. I think that the answer to another question is much more frightening. One that is much more probable; not only probable but possible.

Will robots one day rise up against humankind?

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

Now it may be that a number of sci-fi movies of such plots might have induced this paranoia, but assume for a moment that humans do one day decide to build computers that can think for themselves, rationally and without the buffer of morals.

Movies like the Terminator series, I, Robot, War of the Worlds and The Matrix all give reasons that are pretty valid to my paranoia struck brain, for an inevitable attempt at global domination by robots.

Another scenario wherein Artificial Intelligence might deign to take over the reins of governance on this planet is a loophole within the three laws themselves.

The fact that robots are already being used in war is not a great solace however great its merits might be. They are learning from us, what we know, what we do.

Beware, for they are coming not for you, but for the generation to come.]

[This is my article for the Youth Connect magazine. You can read the entire article here: A Horrific Scenario: What If Robots Stand Up Against Humans One Day?]